The baseball program has made several trips to the College World Series and has produced numerous major- league baseball players. The program has also made 16 NCAA tournament appearances, most recently in 2011 when they defeated FIU, 4-1, in the NCAA regionals. The program has won the AEC Tournament five times, in 1993, 2002, 2005, 2006, and 2011. The program also won the conference in 1990 and 1991, before the America East sponsored a baseball tournament.[2][3]

The basketball teams, as well as all other sports teams, participate in the America East Conference. Current Clemson University head baseball coach Jack Leggett also attended the university, as well as NBA head coach Rick Carlisle (although Carlisle transferred to Virginia and finished his college career there). Other notables include Rufus Harris, Kevin Reed, Matt Rossignol, Jim Boylen, Andy Bedard, and several former Maine high school stars including Bangor's Jon McAllian and Edward Little's Troy Barnies. A prominent current player is San Diego-native Gerald Mclemore. The women's and men's basketball teams play at Alfond Arena, with some games being played at Cross Insurance Center in Bangor starting with the 2013-14 season. The men’s team has held a total of eight games at Memorial Gym since 2003–04.[4] The team has never played in the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament.[5]

The men's basketball team in recent years has made progress as in the 2009–10 season the team finished the season in second place in the America East conference with a 19–11 overall record with recording one of its biggest wins in recent years with a 52–51 win over Boston College of the Atlantic Coast Conference and in the 2010–11 season defeating the University of Massachusetts, 68-56, and Penn State, 74-64.

On May 23, 2007, Blodgett was named the head coach of the women's team. She was released in March 2011.

The Black Bears' rivalry with the New Hampshire Wildcats is the longest continuous basketball rivalry between any two non-Ivy League schools: the men's teams have played each other 109 seasons in a row, from 1904–1905 to the present season (2013–2014).

The team has played several Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) opponents. The team has played teams in recent years such as Iowa, Rutgers, Hawaii, Mississippi State, Nebraska, Connecticut, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh in 2011. In 2004, The Maine Black Bears defeated Mississippi State University, 9-7. This marked the first time that Maine defeated a Division I FBS opponent. The largest crowd that the Black Bears have ever played in front of was 77,469 fans at Memorial Stadium, when Maine fell, 25–7, to the Nebraska Cornhuskers in Lincoln. The team is scheduled to play BCS games at the ACC's Boston College in 2012 and the Big Ten's Northwestern in 2013. UM also defeated longtime rival and FBS opponent Massachusetts, 24-14, in 2013. Despite success over the past decade, including an NCAA tournament berth in 2011, Maine had never won a CAA regular season title. That drought ended on November 16, 2013 as Maine defeated the University of Rhode Island 41-0 at home to win their first CAA title.

Currently the flagship for all football and hockey games, as well as their respective coaches shows are carried on The Voice of Maine News/Talk Network (WVOM-FM, WVQM & WVOM), the current flagship for all men's and women's basketball games as well as baseball and select softball games is WGUY. All games are carried on GoBlackBears.com. TV coverage includes Bangor's WVII-TV (who's games are simulcasted on Fox College Sports. NESN, CBS Sports Network, and NBCSNComcast SportsNet New England also carry select games as part of a larger contract with the conferences the sports are in. During the school year the Black Bear Insider is carried Sunday mornings on WVII at noon, and re-broadcast on Fox College Sports as well.

In 2006 the University sold the multi-media advertising and broadcast rights to all athletic events to Missouri based Learfield Sports. Starting with the fall 2007 sports season, WVOM and WGUY split radio coverage, WGUY carrying men's and women's basketball and select baseball and softball games and WVOM carrying football and hockey broadcasts. After the 2008 fall sports season, WAEI-FM became the flagship for all Maine sports; the rights were transferred again to WKSQ in 2011 (though WAEI's AM sister station remained a co-flagship), before coming back full circle locally to WVOM (Blueberry) and WGUY (WaterFront) in 2013.

Many Black Bear games can also be heard on WMEB-FM, a student-run, commercial-free radio station located on campus.